Anyone that experiences them no doubt wants to stop panic attacks. A panic attack is an insidious form of anxiety, which likes to sneak up on you when you least expect it, grab you and hang tightly on to you for good (or from your perspective, I’m sure . . . a bad) ten minutes.
Think of a panic attack as a terrorist cell of your body’s physical system. It likes to swoop down on you, make lots of noise, and is really quite pleased with itself for not only disrupting you for the moment, but putting your body on a high level of alert for the future.
So let’s just take some of the "terror" out of this attack to explain for a moment — in no uncertain terms — that a panic attack is a completely legitimate and natural physical response your body is providing to what it perceives as "extreme stress."
The one problem is, of course, there’s no extreme stress in sight — at least not any more stress than usual. And that in itself is what can possibly make your panic attack appear even more menacing than it really is.
Overworking Your Nervous System
Your nervous system, during an attack, in effect, gets overworked. Because of this, it eventually sends the wrong signals to the brain. This causes a whole set of various hormones to pour throughout your body which causes other changes as well. All of these changes work together to create the physical sensations of panic that you feel.
What your body is telling you — at the core level — is that it perceives a danger. It may even feel as if it perceives a direct threat on your life. These physical responses after all have been with us since the "dawn of man," as the saying goes.
These physical reactions go back to prehistoric times, when man’s physical survival depended in large part in determining whether he could out run that wooly mammoth he just came face to face with.
You need to keep in mind that these sensations are merely physical symptoms of the disorder. Having lived through more than my share of panic attacks, I’ll be the first one to tell you how horrifyingly frightening they can be.
So it’s rather mundane just to reassure you that these physical manifestations of your anxiety cannot hurt you. Doesn’t do a lot to quell your fears, now does it? But, it’s true!
They really can’t hurt you, at least not in the way you believe. As much as you may believe you may be experiencing a heart attack, you’re not. As much as you may think you’re about to die, you really aren’t.
Complications of Untreated Panic Attack Disorder
But if you ignore this problem it may develop into more serious problems — both mental and physical diseases — believe it or not.
If you ignore your panic attacks and choose not to treat them, you may be setting yourself up to develop a condition called agoraphobia. Or you may begin to experience a depression as a symptom of untreated panic disorder.
Sometimes individuals who suffer from the panic attack disorder are also at risk for developing (or already have developed) a condition called General Anxiety Disorder.